In this paper, we estimate the effect of receiving financial aid for a cohort of students who enrolled at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in the year 2007/2008, through a propensity score matching approach. Using administrative data about these students for four years, the impact of the financial aid on several dimensions of academic performance was…

The 2015 Federal Student Aid Supplement (FSA Supplement), directed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at the U.S. Department of Education (ED), is a collection of federal student loan data intended to augment the 1996/01 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:96/01) and the 2004/09 Beginning Postsecondary…

In this paper, we leverage detailed, individual-level student data to understand the relationships between family finances, merit-based aid, and first-year student retention. With three cohorts of student data that comprise family financial status, institutional merit scholarships, and many of the other known correlates of student retention, we…

The prominence of discourse on postsecondary degree completion, student persistence, and retention has increased in the national dialogue. Heightened attention to college completion rates by the federal government and pressure to tie state funding to performance metrics associated with graduation rates are catalysts for the discussion.…

This study examines the institutional factors associated with student loan default. When a college has more than 30% of its students default on their loans, then the institution faces federal sanctions that could make them ineligible from participating in the federal student loan program. Using Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System…

Consistent increases to the educational costs to attend the University of California are the current climate students and families find themselves grappling with. The federal work study program is one program employed to support students and their families in financing the cost of education. In an effort to further enhance the professional…

This Statistics in Brief examines three cohorts of recent college graduates 1 year after they attained their bachelor's degree. The graduation years for the three cohorts span a 15-year period: 1992-93, 1999-2000, and 2007-08. The latest cohort (2007-08) graduated in the midst of the 2008 recession. This Statistics in Brief first examines how…

A quasi-experiment using quantitative methods was conducted to examine the effects on academic student outcomes when a cohort of employed low-SES community college commuter students (the treatment group, N=198) participated in a comprehensive support and access intervention program, compared with similar students (the matched comparison group,…

The use of Cohort Default Rate (CDR) as the primary measure of student loan defaults among undergraduates was investigated. The study used data extracted from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), quantitative analysis of Likert-scale survey responses from 153 student financial aid professionals on proposed changes to present metrics and…